Odessa Again Read online

  She was a giver, not a taker.

  A fixer! Not a breaker.

  And now that she knew Mud was going to die anyway, she felt … well, better.

  Oliver, however, was not recovering speedily. He rarely smiled, and had no energy to be his pesky self.

  Mom offered to get him a new hamster, but he refused.

  “How about a guinea pig? They’re hardy!”

  “No thanks.”

  “I’d consider a ferret.”

  Oliver shook his head.

  “You know, we could always go back to being a cat family.”

  He didn’t even bother to respond.

  “Hey,” Odessa said. “Remember when your bike got stolen and then Dad went out and got you a new one and it was way better than the one you used to have?”

  Oliver looked at her. For a minute she thought he might tell her to shut up or ask why she had to be such a stupid butt-brain, but he just walked off and closed himself in his room.

  Odessa listened outside his door. Was he crying? Talking to his stuffed hamster, Barry? She heard nothing.

  This silence was maybe the worst sound of all.

  She thought of giving him the hundred-dollar bill. Maybe that would cheer him up. But she decided against it: money can’t buy happiness. At least, that was what grown-ups said.

  Oliver was particularly glum over the weekend. Because they shared a room in what was now Dad and Jennifer’s apartment, it was hard not to notice the depths of his blueness.

  She didn’t know how to cheer him up, but that didn’t stop her from trying. One attempt, a happy dance, ended with her twisting an ankle.

  He wouldn’t play Scrabble. Jennifer had picked up a deluxe version, the kind where the board spins to face the next player, and Odessa brought along her new grown-up dictionary with the purple underlined words, but Oliver shook his head. “No thanks.”

  Odessa set up a runway for a fashion show, and Jennifer let her borrow her heels. She wore her lavender dress even though the wedding was months away, but Oliver refused to put on his suit with the matching tie.

  Jennifer tried too. She suggested a Lego challenge: Who can build the tallest structure in three minutes? Oliver took a pass.

  And then on Saturday morning, while they were watching TV, the only activity Oliver would engage in, his favorite commercial came on. It was for a car driven by hamsters in baggy pants and gold chains, hamsters that could break-dance. Every time Oliver saw this commercial he’d laugh until he cried, except for this Saturday morning when he started crying without any laughing first.

  Odessa sat across the room, stunned. She wanted to go comfort him somehow, but she took too long, and before she knew it Jennifer hurried to the couch and put an arm around the sobbing Oliver.

  That was when he shouted at her.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Shy, timid Oliver roared like a lion.

  Dad came storming into the room. “What’s going on in here?”

  “Nothing,” Jennifer said. She stood, hands deep in her pockets. “Oliver’s just upset.”

  Dad looked from Oliver to Jennifer and back again, and then at Odessa, as if she could do anything other than keep her heart from pounding its way right out of her chest.

  The first thing she wanted to do was run upstairs to her attic. To turn back the clock and reach Oliver first. That way, if he’d shouted, he’d have shouted at her. That’s the way things were supposed to be. Brothers are supposed to shout at sisters. Not at the woman your dad is going to remarry.

  But Odessa couldn’t run upstairs, because she was at the Light House: Dad’s. Her attic was at the Green House: Mom’s.

  “Oliver?” Dad looked at him.

  The room felt like it was shrinking. It felt like someone had turned up the thermostat.

  “It’s okay, Glenn,” Jennifer said.

  More than anything, at that moment, Odessa wished her mom was there. She’d know what to say to make the room expand, and cool down, and feel normal again.

  Odessa looked at the clock above the sofa. They weren’t going home until tomorrow evening, and that would be too late. She couldn’t fix a thing.

  Jennifer walked out of the room. Dad sat by Oliver and all at once Odessa felt that water tank inside herself filling up, not with tears, but with rage.

  If Dad hadn’t left their old house, if he hadn’t de-hyphenated the family, they wouldn’t be in this apartment, and there wouldn’t be an almost-stranger named Jennifer in the other room, and Oliver wouldn’t be looking so miserable because he wouldn’t have screamed, and anyway he wouldn’t have even been given a hamster who died, because when Dad and Mom lived together they said no to rodents.

  Odessa went and took her brother by the hand. It had been so long since she’d held it. She could feel that it had grown bigger. She pulled him into their bedroom. They spent most of what was left of the weekend in there. Odessa wrote in her journal. Oliver played with his Legos.

  When Dad dropped them off on Sunday evening he honked, Mom came to the door, and they smiled at each other. As Odessa walked up the steps, she thought again about their smiles and about all the things she couldn’t fix.

  Odessa’s tenth birthday was approaching, and she found herself wondering if this was what it meant to grow up. Did the world just get more and more mysterious? More incomprehensible? More bewildering?

  There was the attic floor, of course, and then the door with no handle under her desk. There was how your best friend could step out of the way and let you split your head open, yet continue to be your best friend. There was the way two people could smile at each other, and then one could go and remarry somebody else.

  She wished she could just live in Dreamonica, where she got to make every decision—how many puppies, how big a mansion, even what color hair and eyes she had.

  And speaking of eyes, there was Sadie Howell, who had turned her attention to Theo Summers, big-time.

  Odessa could not compete with those pale blue eyes; she couldn’t even match their shade when she designed her online self.

  Smile, blush, giggle. Smile, blush, giggle.

  That was Sadie Howell. Hovering over Theo’s desk. Sitting next to him at assemblies. Running up to him at recess.

  Smile, blush, giggle.

  Odessa couldn’t believe this sort of thing worked. It made Sadie look kind of dumb, or—as Uncle Milo liked to say—one fry short of a Happy Meal.

  But Theo seemed to fall for it. Without his shaggy hair to hide behind, Theo had no choice but to stare right back into Sadie’s eyes.

  All this time Odessa had thought the secret lay in math! If she could show Theo how good she was at solving equations, he’d see that she was worthy of his love.

  It seemed so stupid now. Maybe Odessa’s Happy Meal was the one missing the fry.

  She needed a plan. Solutions to mysteries didn’t fall from the sky. They didn’t materialize out of thin air or show up in the bottom of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Library books didn’t unravel mysteries, and you couldn’t buy answers with a one-hundred-dollar bill. Asking the grown-ups in your life a whole bunch of questions wasn’t any help either.

  She needed to do something.

  Odessa decided to start with the mystery that seemed the most solvable: the door with no handle in her attic. She needed to open that door. She needed Uncle Milo, because for one thing he was handy, and for another, if the door opened onto a secret world or an alternate universe, he was the person she’d want to take with her when she abandoned her old life for a new one.

  But Milo hadn’t come around in a while, and when Odessa asked Mom why, she smiled a goofy smile.

  “He’s been busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  Uncle Milo was famous for doing nothing.

  Mom grasped Odessa’s hands and leaned in close, barely able to contain her excitement. “He’s been spending time with a nice young woman named Meredith.”

  Meredith? Meredith?

  Odess
a immediately pictured this Meredith with pale blue eyes.

  Smile. Blush. Giggle.

  “He’s bringing her to dinner,” Mom said. “Saturday night.”

  Dinner was always better when Uncle Milo came over, but Uncle Milo always came alone.

  Meredith? Odessa anticipated the evening with a combination of giddiness and dread.

  She felt downright griddy.

  What if Meredith didn’t like children?

  What if she was a sour-faced adult with no sense of humor? What if she smelled funny or had horse teeth?

  Or what if she was nice and friendly and pretty like Jennifer, but still a stranger who didn’t belong in the family?

  Saturday morning was haircut day. It had been three months since the last visit to Snippity-Do-Dah, which only meant that Odessa’s long, straight hair was a little longer and a little straighter. Oliver’s short hair had grown shaggy, though not in a cute-shaggy way like Theo Summers’s—more in an I-just-crawled-out-from-under-a-rock-shaggy way.

  Odessa liked Snippity-Do-Dah because they gave out lollipops, and not the tiny kind you could crunch your way through in two seconds. Their lollipops lasted.

  Odessa stared at herself in her mirror. She pulled long strands of hair over her face and then folded them up to just above her eyebrows, so she could see what she’d look like with bangs.

  Cute.

  She turned her head away and then whipped it back around to the mirror, trying to catch herself off guard. She wanted her knee-jerk reaction.

  Still cute.

  She picked up the phone to call Sofia. Sofia would have an opinion on bangs. She was full of opinions. She would have an opinion about bangs in general, and about bangs on Odessa, but Odessa put the phone back down.

  She didn’t totally trust Sofia. And she was still a little mad at her. Sofia didn’t know about the “Odessa liked it shaggy” comment, so she probably thought everything was fine between them.

  But what about her reaction when she thought Odessa and Theo were hiding a secret boyfriend-girlfriend relationship? It was as if she couldn’t believe Theo would ever like Odessa in that way!

  Odessa had gone back and fixed all that, but still, she knew … even if Sofia didn’t. That made it hard to trust her, though they were still best friends in real life and in Dreamonica.

  It was complicated.

  In the car on the way to Snippity-Do-Dah, Odessa said, “I’m getting bangs.” It felt good to have made this decision without Sofia’s approval.

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s just bangs, Mom,” Odessa shot back. Bangs were easy. Simple. Bangs were not at all complicated.

  “Well, it’s up to you, I suppose, but I just want to make sure you’ve given it some thought.”

  Sadie Howell had bangs. Odessa couldn’t go to Snippity-Do-Dah and ask for pale blue eyes, but she could ask for bangs.

  Big mistake.

  When she got home Odessa rushed to her room to see what she could do about her new, not-so-fabulous look. She stared at the mirror that only an hour ago had told her bangs were a good idea. Cute, even.

  Stupid mirror.

  Odessa grabbed her green crushed-velvet headband. Her favorite. She wore it most days anyway, so maybe nobody would notice if she used it to hold those horrible bangs up off her forehead. But her hair just poked out and looked weird.

  She had only nine falls through the floorboards left. Five fingers on one hand, four on the other. You don’t need to be a math whiz to understand that nine is not a large number.

  Odessa had a feeling there were important things to do with these opportunities. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, but she knew she needed to make them count.

  Should she use one to undo a haircut?

  Probably not. After all, hair grows back.

  But Odessa couldn’t afford to look not-so-fabulous. There was Sadie Howell. And Meredith was coming for dinner.

  Bangs mattered. Bangs were important.

  *

  Back at Snippity-Do-Dah, sitting in the bright yellow swivel chair, Odessa looked at herself in the mirror.

  Bangs. How stupid!

  “Just a little off the bottom,” she said. “Thank you very much!”

  Meredith did not have pale blue eyes or horse teeth, but she did have a good sense of humor. And she was a third-grade teacher, so she liked kids.

  Odessa’s third-grade teacher had been Ms. Albright. Ms. Albright was the last person in the world Odessa could imagine Uncle Milo bringing to dinner. She also couldn’t imagine calling Ms. Albright by her first name, whatever that was.

  She thought about the kids in Meredith’s third-grade class. What did they call her? What would they think about Odessa calling her Meredith?

  Odessa wore her favorite outfit—her peace T-shirt, gray skinny jeans, and pink Vans. She brushed her bangless hair until it shone.

  As usual, Oliver didn’t put any effort whatsoever into his appearance.

  “You should change,” Odessa said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you look like a toad in that shirt. And Meredith is coming over. And if you act like you look—that is to say, like a toad—she may decide she doesn’t want to ever have children with Uncle Milo because maybe they’d get your toad genes.” Geez. Oliver could be so annoying. And so clueless. “Toad,” she said one more time before she slammed his door and walked away.

  Odessa was glad she’d bothered with her outfit. Meredith had red hair and three piercings in each ear. She wore tall boots and a denim dress, and she looked much cooler than Ms. Albright ever did.

  Meredith smiled at Milo a lot. And he smiled at her. Odessa was smiling too. It was a regular smile-fest. Except for Oliver.

  Odessa felt something like guilt tug at her. Maybe she was responsible for Oliver’s mood. But what could she do? He looked like a toad in that shirt. And it was her duty as his sister to tell him so.

  By the time Mom brought out dessert—chocolate mousse—Odessa loved Meredith. She was deep in an I want you to be my aunt sort of love, and because she loved Meredith this way, she felt really bad about having to do what she was going to do next.

  She needed Uncle Milo’s help with the door with no handle, and she didn’t know Meredith well enough yet to know what kind of company she’d be in an alternate universe, if that was where the door led. She needed to get Milo alone.

  “Can you come up to my room?” Odessa asked.

  “Sure, O,” Milo said, and he grabbed Meredith by the hand. She had small fingers with perfectly manicured silver nails. “Let’s go.”

  “Not her,” Odessa said. “Just you.”

  Odessa knew how she sounded. But she couldn’t think of any other way to ask, and since she couldn’t come out and explain why she wanted only Milo, she was left with no choice but to come off as rude.

  Uncouth.

  Milo looked wounded. He turned to Meredith. She took her hand out of his and placed it on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay, baby.” Baby? Meredith looked at Odessa and winked. “Sometimes a girl just needs a little alone time with her favorite uncle. I totally understand.”

  Odessa didn’t know how to wink, so she didn’t wink back.

  Milo followed Odessa up the stairs while Meredith used her third-grade teacher skills to try to interest Oliver in a game of Uno.

  “What’s this all about?” Milo asked once they were safely in the attic. She searched his eyes for the twinkle they usually got when she and Milo were in the midst of conspiring.

  No twinkle.

  His eyes looked like Mom’s did when Odessa left dishes in the sink, or her shoes at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I need your help,” she said. “I really, really need your help.”

  Milo softened. “Talk to me,” he said.

  Odessa reached for Clark Funds’s penlight and shined it on the door with no handle.

  Milo got down onto his knees.

  “It’s a crawl
space,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  It sounded fun. Like the indoor playground at the mall Mom used to take her to when she was little, before Odessa realized that there was cool stuff you could buy at the mall.

  “It’s sort of like another attic. Sometimes it’s used for storage.”

  Her attic had an attic?

  “I need to get in there.”

  Milo narrowed his eyes. She saw just the slightest hint of a twinkle.

  “I need to,” she pleaded.

  He reached over and gave it a shove. It wouldn’t budge, but Odessa could have told him that.

  “It’s painted shut,” he said. “We’ve just got to loosen up the edges.”

  He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a Swiss Army knife, and ran it along the perimeter of the small square entry. White chips of paint fell onto the floor.

  Milo gave it another shove. The door shifted slightly but still wouldn’t open. He worked his knife around the edges again, and this time he leaned against the door with his shoulder.

  Finally, it gave way, and Milo tumbled forward, hitting his head on the wall with an alarming whack.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Milo said as he rubbed the spot just above his right eyebrow. “I don’t really use my head much anyway.”

  Odessa hesitated. She’d visualized so many possibilities for what lay beyond that door with no handle that she was suddenly afraid to look inside.

  She wasn’t afraid of finding something.

  She was afraid of finding nothing.

  She stared into the darkness.

  “Well,” Milo said. “My work is done here.”

  He stood up to leave. Odessa opened her mouth to ask him to wait, because what if an alternate world really did lie beyond that darkness? What if she was about to step into a new life? She’d need Milo by her side.

  But she didn’t say anything, because she knew what was inside that door. She knew it in her bones.

  Nothing.

  Milo started down the steps, but then he stopped. “You know,” he said, scratching his head, “you really should try to be a little more patient with and nicer to your brother. I know it isn’t always easy, but … he’s your person in this world. And you’re his. You’ll need each other, all your lives.”